First Post (Take Two)

Hello all!

I am trying to restart blogging. I had a failed attempt with Wordpress and after two posts before I left for France, I gave up. But here I am again, ready to start fresh. Thanks Blogger!

I wanted this blog to be a way for me to keep in touch with everyone in my life as an alternative to writing super long boring emails with the same stories five times a week, I can now just write on super long boring blog post! I also want it to be a diary-like deal where I can look back and see how lame I sounded years ago! Can't wait!

Alright. I will recap a little bit. I packed, I freaked out, I flew to France and got settled in my new town. I went to the bank, grocery shopped, and ran out of money within a month. My first day of really teaching is today. For my first class I will be showing a class of seniors a video clip and asking them questions about it. It is gonna be great. After that I will introduce myself to another group of students who have some classes like physics and geography in English, so I am hoping their level will be pretty high. I have had a very easy week transitioning into my teacher life and all the other teachers seem happy to have me around, and have been very understanding of my cluelessness.

UPDATE:

So it is now Saturday and I have had a little time to think about my first day and first ever teaching experience, and I have to say that overall it went pretty well. My first class was a disaster. It was totally my fault too, which is the worst part. Anyway. I was taking half a class, for half the class period (about 25 minutes) and was given a lesson to facilitate. Easy enough right? Well, the sheet I that I got looked easy enough to put into action. In practice I totally screwed up the order of events. I talked too fast because I was nervous, and we went way over time meaning that the second class, although working WAY better, only had 10 minutes for the lesson. Oops.

I think it was just hard because I wasn't as comfortable with the worksheet as I thought, and I didn't think to do stupid things like putting up the corrections on the board. Oh man, it was a mess! Luckily I was way more in control with the second class, and I introduced myself like a normal person should and then started the class in the right order.

Luckily the second part of my day went way better. I basically introduced myself to a class (seniors who had some classes in English like physics and history so their level of English was great). Another thing that helped was that there was no lesson plan chosen for me so they basically just asked me questions the whole time and we talked about Flers and what Americans thought of French people. I of course pulled out the silly ones, and tried not to say anything that might be offensive . . . I had two classes like that back to back and they all really listened to me and seemed genuinely interested in the things I had to say. It was a nice change.

My first day was not super easy or without problems but I think that overall it was a pretty good first day. I am really looking forward to doing better next time! One great thing I realized from all of this is that I am not at all intimidated by high school students. I thought I would be or that I would be embarrassed, or that I would care what they thought of me, and I really didn't. I was more embarrassed that they didn't get much out of the lesson, and that I didn't know my stuff, and I was mostly more annoyed at myself than worried that they thought I sucked. It was a relief to feel at least that I had only myself to improve, and that the students weren't the problem at all.


In other news, Olivier and I had dinner with my neighbor and her friend last night. My neighbor is my age and works as a surveillant (it is something we don't have in the US, but it is basically a teacher who is only in charge of discipline and watches detention and makes sure everyone is behaving in the halls and things like that) in the same high school as me. It was nice to be able to talk about how weird it is to be right out of school and in the position of authority. Her and her friend told us about a festival happening in a town nearby with a big market and lots of animals. Olivier and I are going to try and stop by tomorrow! 

Today we don't have any big plans. We cleaned the apartment, which was a great time, and might walk around a nearby town later this afternoon to get out of the house a little. 

I will try to start updating this blog more often! Thanks for reading!

Shoshana